Blog Action Day, today. Theme to write about: the environment. Huge category. Enormous. Fraught with lots of personal guilt and shallow feel-good gesturing too. What can we, any of us do, for real, about the environment?

Look, if you want quick tips, hit up Google, read a book on it or check out some blogs and podcasts on the topic:

But for this moment, would you take your thoughts on this issue to a different level? Can you step away from knee-jerk pro or con or eco-gestures and consider a bigger picture? About what kind of person you want to be in the world? Can you try to think about your life as connected, and take into consideration how you care for and regard yourself, others around you and total strangers?

Do you accuse and assign blame? Do you look for quick fixes to assuage your own guilt? Or are you earnestly trying to keep your mind open about what could be better, where to find ideas, how to spread them? What actions in your quiet private everyday can make you healthier and more able to contend with complex issues like the environment? Can you source your actions from love and can you take the time to understand how you affect the broader world? Can you see beyond your selfish opinions and wants and try to imagine how your actions and positions play out on larger and larger scales?

Can you start cleaning up the environment inside your head, be patient with yourself, but earnestly start?

Can that lead to looking at your life just a little bit more clearly every day, and beginning to adopt, sustainably, the kinds of individual actions, thoughts and habits that can lead to less personal environmental impact in the future?

Activism tweaks the nose of patience. But, I think patience does more with time. Next time you fly (and, natch, offset your carbon), stare down the hills and valleys and contours traced by gazillions of rivulets over time and know the whole friggin landscapes can be shaped by water. How will you apply this to shaping your own life?

Is it just me, or does everyone else notice that women who make it to some reasonable level of power in North America are painted as either sluts, junkies, airheads, bitches, witches* or some other awfully negative female stereotype?

We attack and demean what we feel is threatening. So, 1) why is our culture so threatened by strong women? and 2) do we attack and demean women in fundamentally more harsh, shallow, callow ways?

Why the pressure on strong women to be “everything” and not just who they are. Remember Hillary being compelled to share her chocolate chip cookie recipe to somehow prove she was also a decent mom & wife? Blegh.

But this, from the comments, bothered me even more:

It’s a difficult balancing act to need to be seen as a pro-active, ambitious leader, yet a gentle and caring woman, and I think it results in some women with good intentions looking a lot more ruthless than they are.

Ok waiddaminnit. Do we ask our male leaders to pull off this sleight of hand too? Really? To the same degree?

… in front of the Palo Alto Apple store. He (not-so-humbly) calls it the PR person’s dream, and he does have a point. If you wanted a slice of Robert Scoble’s time and attention, or to pitch getting onto his podcast show, have at him. (Valleywag did).

But of course they are there for more than just the iPhones.

For starters, they’ve been interviewed almost nonstop since arrival. It’s a PR stunt. And the thrill of the weird. And something “to be able to say you did”. As he pointed out, it’s also a great time to pitch him, kowtow to him, (batteries, starbucks, pownce invites, whatever) etc. Hell, I’ve had professors who made themselves a lot less accessible.

But we think taking a dump on this is pointless and weak. The guy seems a decent fella, puts himself out there a lot for someone who is, relatively, in the public eye. Let’s face it, he’s in the attention business. If they want to camp out on the sidewalk for 31 hours just to say they did, well good on ’em.

Bored? Watch ’em wait UPDATE: Why not watch the whole gang wait on ZoomrTV? Get there in 10 minutes (it’s currently 6:35 out there) for pizza!

“Here is the critical point to understand when it comes to controlling your happiness. You can control your happiness to the degree that you can control your attention in your mind.

“By controlling your attention you are able to determine the perspective you choose. With choice over your perspective you can decide what interpretations to make and which one you will believe. Choosing the interpretation you make will determine your emotional outcome.

“It’s popular today for people to try changing their thinking or beliefs in order to create happiness in their life. However a prerequisite to changing your thinking is that you first have to get control over your attention. If you don’t do this, your thinking will attempt to control your thinking. This can become a circular loop in the mind.